• redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Hah. They do pose some unique challenges for native English speakers. Can’t say I’ve looked at Japanese but with Mandarin, there is (some) vocabulary that is slightly transparent, like 卡尔吗克思。 I remember really puzzling over that one in an article about an airport until I sounded it out. But you’re right, the advantage for English speakers is significantly greater for Indo-European and especially Romance/Germanic languages.

    (For anyone interested in the characters above)

    If I’m right, they mean Karl Marx. In pinyin, Kǎ’ěr mǎkèsī.